Physical Appearance In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Society holds unrealistic beauty standards which people believe they must meet to be accepted. The characters in the novel Frankenstein submit to this ideology while shunning Victor Frankenstein’s monster, whom was carefully constructed from grotesque pieces of corpses. Because Victor's parents raised him to value physical appearances, he is blind to the idea of inner beauty and immediately rejects the hideous monster that he creates. However, throughout the creature’s character development in the novel, the monster is portrayed as inherently beautiful as he often commits generous deeds that go unnoticed. A common motif portrayed throughout Frankenstein is outer beauty, which underscores the theme of outward appearance as the basis of a person's …show more content…
While creating the monster, Victor combines the corpse pieces that are most beautiful: a large head for great intelligence and strong arms and legs for physical strength. However, Victor does not look at the monster until it is brought to life and is blinded by the monster’s repulsiveness when he finally does so. The monster’s “face was wrinkled into contortions too horrible for human eyes to behold” (105). Victor sees the horrid creature he has made and is appalled; the creature is physically repulsive. Since Victor values physical appearance more than inner beauty, he flees from the creature after witnessing its ugliness, rather than embracing it. Mary Shelley portrays Victor not as wanting to protect his creation but to avoid it. She attributes this to the creature's hideous attributes and develops a perspective that views the monster as something inherently devoid of value due to its appalling features, which depicts a basic theme of the …show more content…
After privately observing the De Lacey family for a time, he goes into the woods and sees his reflection in some water. Earlier, “[He] had admired the perfect forms of [his] cottagers -- their grace, beauty, and delicate complexions,” and he “was terrified when [he] viewed [himself] in a transparent pool!” (80). After viewing himself in the pond, he finally understands his disfigurement and convinces himself that he truly is a monster. The creature also values physical beauty, so this realization devastates him. However, his thoughts and actions depict that his personality is beautiful despite his physical appearance. He brings firewood to the De Lacey family in secret, and he does not fight back when they reject him and the son, Felix, begins to beat him. The creature continues to hold out hope and decides to ask Victor to create an equally terrifying woman to be his partner. Therefore, the creature understands and follows society’s standards of beauty as it substantiates the novel’s message. Mary Shelley makes an eye-opening statement about beauty in her novel Frankenstein. She illustrates Victor’s monster as an beastly abomination and associates its rejection from society as a direct consequence of its repulsive exterior, a key motif throughout the plot. Society should value inner beauty over appearance;
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